The Disappearance of the Cutter 'Alicia'
by DezoPenguin
Summary: The disaster left nineteen people dead and the authorities without answers. But can a detective from the age of the hansom cab deal with the mystery of a spacecraft that vanishes without a trace?
1. Chapter 1

_AUTHOR'S NOTE: I have to admit it, _Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century_ is a guilty pleasure of mine. As someone who voraciously consumes every Holmes pastiche he can get his hands on, as well as being a fan of cyberpunk settings and cross-genre fiction generally, the idea of Sherlock Holmes falling down a gaping plothole and emerging in a cyberpunk dystopia (Corporations doing illegal biotech experiments on humans? A ruined underground where even New Scotland Yard isn't _allowed_ to go except in force? An inversion layer over the city that makes the sky permanently yellow? The government _forcibly brainwashing criminals_ as part of a legal sentence? Go on, try to tell me that isn't a cyberpunk dystopia!) pretty much made me dance in the streets. The only thing better would be for it to be an ordinary prime-time show, so the writers wouldn't have to "kiddify" things..._

_Since the show's episodes are based, however flimsily, on the actual Holmes stories, I figured that a pastiche of an episode should be based on an "untold case" Watson refers to but was never written by Conan Doyle. Not that Conan Doyle would have written about spaceships; that was more an H.G. Wells type of thing..._

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"Control to _Prescott_; we have you for departure vector 04."

"Copy that, Control; we're locked in and outbound. Jettisoning booster core now."

"Goodbye from New London, _Prescott_."

Keith Robey cut the communications link and leaned back in his chair.

"Hey, Jack, what're you doing, growing the beans in there?"

"Ah, hold yer horses," called back the other tech. "Hey, did'ja catch the match yesterday? Inverness evened it up against the Aussies."

Robey groaned.

"Cricket again? Would it kill you to get with a game played by people born in the last fifty years?"

"Cricket is the quintessential British game, exemplifying the true national spirit of sport," Jack responded in an artificially nasal voice, mocking the vidscreen commentator who covered the matches.

"Oh, please, I--hey!" Robey sat bolt upright as alarms flashed all over his panel. "We've got a rogue inbound!"

The coffee forgotten, Jack was at his own seat in an instant.

"Her transponder's reading her as a private cutter, the _Alicia_."

"Control to _Alicia_. This is New London Control to cutter _Alicia_. You are not repeat not cleared for approach. Break off your approach at once."

There was no response.

"Zed!" Robey cursed. "Jack, she's halfway between Vectors 08 and 19. Could veer either way."

"Keith, the _Stanburton_ is outbound on 19!"

"I know, Jack. _Stanburton_, this is Control. We've got a rogue inbound in your direction! Shift your course to Vector 17 now."

"We copy that, Control."

"Control to _Alicia_. Break off, repeat break off _now_!"

"She's not stopping, Keith. Accelerating at full speed."

"Control, _Stanburton!_" another voice shrieked. "We have a misfire in our starboard thrust pods! We've lost control!"

"Oh, God," Robey whispered. "Rescue and medical shuttles stand by."

"_Alicia_ still inbound at full. She'll impact in Control in eighty-four seconds. _Stanburton_ veering off-course. She's lost ascent."

"Oh, God," Robey repeated. It was all he could say. There was nothing he could do, only watch helplessly as his screen showed the Moon shuttle veering wildly out of control to impact in the Thames River. Rescue vehicles were already on the way, but given the force of the crash it was almost a lost cause even if there were no secondary effects.

"_Alicia_ still inbound! Thirty...twenty-five..."

When it hit, the damage would make the _Stanburton_'s crash seem like a footnote to the real disaster.

"No response from Air Defense, Keith. Twenty..."

Robey lifted his eyes to the window. Another few seconds and he'd be able to see the _Alicia_, a blazing star on its inbound course, Jupiter's thunderbolt levying its toll on a sinful humanity that had dared to reach into the heavens.

"Fifteen..."

He wondered if his atheist wife would offer a prayer for him or if, at the last, she would be right.

"Robey, it's gone!" Jack suddenly exclaimed.

"What?"

"The _Alicia_! She's not on my screen any more!"

The astonishing claim was backed up by the evidence of Robey's own eyes. There was no blazing star, no plummeting angel of death in the sky outside.

"Did Air Defense...?"

"No, it just vanished, like it was never there!"

Robey looked out at the plumes of smoke rising from the _Stanburton_'s crash site.

"It was there, Jack. It was there."

-X X X-

"This is a Methkelan Industries 2097-model cutter, Mr. Holmes. It has a wingspan of forty-seven feet and is a hundred and ninety-four feet long. I am certain you would agree that a craft like this does _not_ just vanish!"

Sherlock Holmes nodded once.

"I quite agree, Lord Engleston. Although the popular press have already been speculating as broadly afield as unidentified flying objects and holes in the space-time continuum, it is self-evident that something more substantial must have taken place."

"Good, good," enthused the bronze-bearded chief of the British Astronautics Bureau. "I admit, I'd wondered about calling in a man from the nineteenth century to solve a problem in the twenty-second, even with the testimonials from New Scotland Yard, but it's clear you've got the right attitude for this business."

If there was a slight tightening of the lips, a flicker of discontent in Holmes's eyes at the mention of his revivification centuries after his death, it passed too quickly for Lord Engleston to detect.

"The popular press also reports that nineteen people, passengers and crew, died on board the _Stanburton_ during the incident. I find it curious that you did not choose to begin with that." While he spoke, Holmes looked over the gleaming silver spaceplane shown in three-dimensional holo-image before him. The _Alicia_ would have been a private craft, a sleek yacht for a rich individual or for corporate space travel.

"The _Stanburton_ isn't a mystery, Holmes," Lord Engleston snapped, no doubt nettled by the detective's insinuation that he might be assigning a lower priority to the deaths. "It's a tragedy, a criminal tragedy if you ask me. When it made its evasive maneuvers, the thrusters misfired due to the extreme stress being placed on them. Poor maintenance and the insistence of the shuttle company in using an outdated craft not suitable for our present spaceport system told that tale. The Bureau's been sending warnings for years to Astra-Transit and reporting on industry conditions to Parliament for almost as long."

"Has it, indeed?"

"Those blasted politicians, though, won't look farther than corporate contributions, so they won't pass any additional space-travel safety laws with teeth or give us active police powers before the fact, making a disaster like this inevitable. No, Mr. Holmes, there are no mysteries to be solved in the _Stanburton_ crash. The _Alicia_'s a different matter. It was here, and then it was gone. Find out where and how, and you'll be--well, zed, you already _are_ Sherlock Holmes, aren't you?"

"I sometimes wonder. Nonetheless, Lord Engleston, I would be more than happy to accept this case. Please make the Astronautics Bureau's report on the incident available for Watson to download."

"Watson?" Lord Engleston harrumphed. "Oh, yes, your robot partner. Where is he, anyway?"

"As always, Lord Engleston, Watson is doing his job."

-X X X-

"That's it, man, that's all there is," Robey said. "I've been over it a thousand times before."

"Then talking to me was equivalent to only one-tenth of one percent of your previous time spent on this matter. That should not cause such a negative response as you are displaying."

_One-tenth of one--!_ This was why Robey hated to deal with droids. This one seemed to have pretensions of humanity, since it wore a Scotland Yard-issue elasto-mask which lent it a broad, well-fleshed face that actually went well with its large-framed metal body. The bushy moustache, muttonchops, and bowler hat were obvious affectations, as was the long brown coat. And he'd introduced himself as "Watson," not by some compu-droid registration number.

"All right, all right," Robey gave up. "Me and Jack--"

"That would be Jack Colston?" Watson interrupted.

"Yeah, yeah...Jack Colston. We were working the third shift in the tower. That's four to ten P.M.; the spaceport's up and running twenty-four hours a day so the shifts are six hours each so nobody gets too tired at the switch."

"A commendable precaution."

"Jack and I have worked that shift for two and a half years now; we make a good team. He was in the back room making coffee when the scanner tells me we've got a rogue inbound--that is, a ship entering the spaceport's flight space without clearance. It gets pretty congested, as you can guess, and it's necessary to keep flights in tightly ordered channels, which we call vectors. Our tower computer"--he tapped the panel--"transmits flight map data to any ship whose transponder interfaces with the system, so everybody's on the same page, so to speak."

"I see. Do go on."

"Well, the _Alicia_'s transponder tells us who she is, and the tracking sensors tell us what and where. She didn't respond to any of our communications, so we tried to wave off the _Stanburton_. Of course, an outbound ship can't just abort launch; those main boosters have to be cranked to full to achieve escape velocity, but she can shift to a different vector. Only..."

Robey shuddered. Crashes were a fact of powered travel; they'd happened ever since the first time someone had decided to get on a horse and ride. This had been the first one on his watch, though, the first time that he'd been at the board when a ship went down in a flaming pyre.

"I have sufficient details on the _Stanburton_ crash," Watson said...sympathetically? From a droid? Nah, it couldn't be. "Please continue from that point."

"The _Alicia_ just kept on coming, and she didn't slow to descent speed. Jack and I figured something was wrong on her, that there'd been some computer malfunction or something, 'cause she just kept right on. Then--nothing!"

"Nothing?"

"Nothing. Poof! She was gone. Nothing on screen, and nothing we could see with our eyes. It was like the _Alicia_ had never been there!" Robey shook his head. "The spaceport's tech staff and the Astronautics Bureau's investigators all but took apart the computer, but they didn't find anything wrong with it. But...if it wasn't some ghost in the machine, then where did the _Alicia_ go?"

-X X X-

"It seems evident to me, Holmes, that there never was an inbound cutter, and that the tower operators reacted to a spacecraft that existed only in their equipment."

"Does it, Watson?" Holmes replied.

As usual it was the droid who was flying their hovercraft, a boxy vehicle whose shape was vaguely reminiscent of a 1920s automobile. Holmes strongly suspected it was this shape which had led him to select it over sleeker models, a touch of something from the era in which he'd died. Holmes was capable of flying--indeed, he was all but compelled to master the skills of living in this strange future by his own need for independence--but he preferred not to when working on a case. Brain-work was something which should never be done with divided attention.

"Several dozen metric tons of cutter cannot be made to vanish into thin air. No witnesses observed the _Alicia_ in any form other than as electronic data."

"I agree that data is more easily manipulable than are the laws of physics, but I must point out that two separate teams of investigators examined the spaceport control computer and found no evidence of an electronic error or of hacking. In addition, the tower's report of the _Alicia_'s behavior was echoed by the nearby spaceships _Prescott, Adventure, _and _Nyland_. No, if it was as simple as all that, then Lord Engleston would have had no need to consult me. Nor does it explain the most intriguing aspect of this case, which we are even now on our way to investigate."

"What is that, Holmes?"

The detective smiled thinly.

"The fact that there is indeed a cutter _Alicia_."


	2. Chapter 2

The room in which Anthony Harker received Holmes and Watson reminded the detective of his own time: walls paneled in dark oak decorated with hunting trophies and with a massive stone fireplace. In this strange new world of 2104, real-life examples of the boar, wolf, and stag whose glassy eyes stared down at Holmes were found in Britain only in nature preserves and zoos. Unlike the trophies, however, Holmes had been given a second lease on life, and he did not intend to waste it on pointless emotional musings.

The maid who ushered in Holmes and Watson and offered them refreshments was also dressed in Victorian style, with floor-length dress and pristine white apron and mobcap. Despite Harker's clear affection for the archaic setting, though, he was no Anti-Tech. A man who objected to modern technology would not have a robot for a maidservant.

"You're Holmes, then?" Harker boomed as he stepped into the room. "Can't say I appreciate having a private eye poking around, I'll say so up front. Wouldn't have given you the time of day if Lord Engleston hadn't sent you. Can't be giving the Minister of Astronautics a hard time of it."

"Not when you are the chief executive officer of Gold Lion Lines," Holmes agreed. "And especially not when your corporation is the registered owner of the cutter that caused the tragic deaths of nineteen people."

Harker's heavy brows furrowed as he glared at Holmes.

"That accusation is completely irresponsible! The _Alicia_ has been down for maintenance for the better part of two weeks! She isn't capable of flying, whether out of control or not. Moreover, she certainly isn't capable of disappearing into thin air!"

"I admit, it seems most unlikely, but the facts are what they are. The testimony of several witnesses--human and electronic--cannot be dismissed out of hand."

"Well, go and take a look for yourself, then," Harker snapped, waving his hand at a north-facing window. "The _Alicia_ is in her hanger right her on these grounds."

"A spacecraft on a private residence?" Watson interjected with surprise.

"The Methkelen-2097 cutter is capable of atmospheric flight as well as space travel," Holmes informed him. "Undoubtedly Mr. Harker employs it as a plane as well as a spacecraft, saving Gold Lion the cost of maintaining two vehicles even though the _Alicia_ is more expensive than an airplane on a per-trip basis. I am correct, am I not?" he appended towards their host.

"Y-yes, but how did you know?"

"Eyes and brains, Mr. Harker. Knowledge of the _Alicia's_ specifications was an obvious piece of information for me to acquire for this investigation, and the deductions from there are quite elementary. Now, while I certainly do intend to examine the _Alicia_, I would prefer to do so after we complete our talk."

"Talk?" Harker's temper seemed to have suffered only a momentary ebb. "What can we possibly have to talk about? I don't know what those people thought they were seeing, but it wasn't my cutter! If you ask me, the ones at fault here are the hacks at Astra-Transit! Putting unsafe craft in use, sooner or later something like this was going to happen! The Bureau ought to be investigating _them_, not off chasing space ghosts."

"A circumstance which would be highly favorable for your own company, would it not? A public-relations blow of that measure to your competitors would result in significant gains for you."

"Are you accusing me of engineering that disaster, Holmes? Are you saying I'd go that far, for _money_?"

"If I accuse someone, Mr. Harker, rest assured that there is no question that I have done so."

"I _won't_ be talked about that way! I run a clean company!"

"Indeed," Holmes said, clearly acknowledging the statement for its existence rather than for its truth. "Now, if you'll have someone show us to the _Alicia_?"

Red-faced, Harker stalked to a corner of the room and yanked on a bell-pull. Another robotic servant, this one in footman's livery, answered his summons.

"Escort these..._gentlemen_...to the hangar."

"Yes, sir."

Holmes and Watson rose to follow the footman, but on his way out of the room Holmes paused and turned back.

"Oh by the way, Mr. Harker...the _Prescott_, she is a Gold Lion spaceship, isn't she?"

-X X X-

Raul Martinez was a Spaniard by birth; Holmes's sensitive ear traced the faint accents in his fluent, even idiomatic English to the region of Cadiz--presuming that speech hadn't changed in two hundred years as so many things had.

"Sherlock Holmes," the thin, clean-shaven man said. "Man, I thought you were a story."

"Stories and legends have a way of coming true in unexpected ways. Take the _Alicia_, for example."

"Yeah, Mr. Harker said you'd be here to see her. Come on into the hangar. Maybe you'll find something those Astronautics Bureau jackals couldn't."

He pressed his palm against the scanner plate next to the hangar door. A moment later the door slid open.

"I see Mr. Harker takes his security seriously," Holmes remarked approvingly.

"Anti-corporate terrorism is not as common here as it is in America or Germany, but it does take place."

"Who has access to the hangar?" Watson asked the obvious question.

"Mr. Harker, his pilot Philip Dustin, and I are the only ones who can open the door when it is locked, although of course we admit others when work is to be done. Of course, since the investigation began no one but the investigators have been permitted access. It annoys Mr. Harker no end, since it delays even more the _Alicia_'s overhaul work."

"Yes, Mr. Harker mentioned that she was undergoing routine maintenance."

Martinez grinned, showing fine, white teeth.

"Routine to him, but then, he is only the owner, not the chief engineer and mechanic. In fact, she is undergoing her required five-year overhaul, a mandated top-to-bottom check of her critical systems and replacement of numerous parts whether they need it or not."

"Mandated? Do you mean in the legal sense, or only metaphorically?"

"Both. But come on inside."

He stepped through the door. Holmes and Watson followed, and the door slid shut behind them, sealing them into gloom broken only by faint emergency track lighting.

"Lights," Martinez said. Audio sensors matched his voiceprint, and in response the internal lights sprang to life, illuminating the great vault of the hangar and the craft within. The _Alicia_ looked much like the holo-image Lord Engleston had shown Holmes, only painted in Gold Lion's distinctive blue-and-gold colors. Some of the cutter's sleek, bird-of-prey majesty had been stolen from her, though, by the many open access panels studding her sides and wings, as well as the missing engine housing in the rear exposing the half-dismantled drive system.

"As you can see, we're in the middle of a complete overhaul. The _Alicia_ has spent the past two weeks in the middle of this process."

"I agree; she is clearly in this state _now_," Holmes replied. "The question is, whether this was also the case during the incident? With a trained staff, the _Alicia_ could have been put into this condition overnight."

Martinez's lips curled down. Clearly, he did not appreciate having his honesty doubted.

"If my word is not enough for you, Mr. Holmes, the hangar security logs will verify what I am saying."

"Excellent. You'll make them available for Watson to download before we leave. Now, on to the next issue. I have heard much thus far of the _Alicia_'s 'transponder.' I wish to know more."

"How much more?"

"Assume that I know nothing of modern astronautics." It wasn't that far from the truth, though Holmes's voracious appetite for information had led him to research a fair amount of background data.

"All right then--if you're willing to accept my word for it."

Holmes could have said a few words about how in an investigation witness testimony was always suspect and that he accepted no one's word, not even New Scotland Yard's, unless it was supported by evidence--that it was a matter of general principle, not any kind of particular distrust of Martinez. He _could_ have...but then again, he'd never given particular concern to people's ruffled feelings in his past and he wasn't going to start now.

"Go on."

"The idea evolved from the IFF--that's 'Identify Friend or Foe'--signals that were introduced in the latter half of the twentieth century. Space travel involves much more complicated factors than air travel, and there's less that can be done to fix a mistake once it occurs, particularly on takeoff or re-entry. The transponder system was put in place by international treaty to make spaceport management feasible."

"I see."

"Every ship has a unique electronic code, which is broadcast to all ships and relay points in range. It contains certain information as to the ship's identity and registry, and matches with a complete file in the international astronautics database. This way, the guys running the spaceport know what the ship is and what capabilities it has, so it can be guided to an approach or takeoff vector that it can manage. The _Alicia_, here, can make a much more varied selection of reentries, particularly given its atmospheric flight capabilities, than a lumbering shuttle."

"And who maintains this database?"

"The major industrialized, spacefaring nations, and their various space-related bureaucracies. Registration is required under national and international law as well as policy within extraterritorial corporations."

"It would seem, then, that a great deal depends on maintenance of this database."

Martinez nodded.

"The transponder system gives instantaneous access to data for astronautics authorities and other ships alike. Without it, people would have to rely on personal knowledge and high-grade analytical sensors to run commercial space travel, and that simply isn't feasible. There's too little margin for error." Martinez seemed to stare off into space for a second; it was little trouble for Holmes to deduce that he was thinking of the _Stanburton_ disaster.

"I understand. Now, as a mechanic, tell me more about the physical nature of a transponder. Is it a separate piece of equipment, or merely a part of the ship's computer software?"

"It's a separate mechanism. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a computer; it's just data storage linked to a broadcast array. When installed, it links to the ship's own navigation and communications equipment, but has its own emergency signaler if it detects a problem with the ship's systems."

"I see. And is the _Alicia_'s transponder in place?"

"Of course. I'll show you."

He wheeled a ladder over to the cutter's nose, flipped down its wheel chucks, and climbed up. With a small tool, he freed a panel in the hull and opened it to reveal an egg-shaped device, matte-black in color and with various pale green lights showing along its length. It looked like the images from Holmes's research, at least, but appearances were so often deceiving.

"Watson, if you would?"

Watson took Martinez's place on the ladder and extended a hand. His palm scanners activated, in this case retrieving the datastream constantly being transmitted by the device.

"Holmes, this information appears identical to that received by the New London Spaceport control tower, and confirmed by the international database as belonging to the _Alicia_."

"There's no way that transponder was in the air over New London. It isn't possible!"

"One thing I have learned since my arrival in this era, Mr. Martinez, is a profound distrust for the word 'impossible.' Come, Watson; we have matters to attend to."

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_NOTE: The 2104 dating is based on the assumption that this story takes place after the end of the series. May, 2103 is given as the date of the series' start in "The Fall and Rise of Sherlock Holmes," and Christmastime rolls around during "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle," presumably December, 2103._


	3. Chapter 3

"News on Demand: Astronautics Bureau initiates investigation of Astra-Transit."

"More," Holmes said. The vidscreen obediently set the image of the blonde newscaster in motion again.

"In response to the ongoing public outcry over the recent crash of the shuttle _Stanburton_, the Royal Astronautics Bureau has launched a sweeping inquiry of space travel line Astra-Transit Corporation. According to a statement released by the Bureau, analysis of the crash revealed that the doomed shuttle was in an unsafe condition to fly, leading to a sweeping inquiry into Astra-Transit's maintenance and safety practices. In the wake of this announcement, analysts expect that several civil lawsuits are expected to follow. Share prices of Astra-Transit have fallen by seventeen percent in response to the news..."

"Quite a depressing day for Astra-Transit, wouldn't you say, Holmes?" Watson commented.

"Indeed it is, albeit a well-deserved one," Holmes noted. He rose from his seat at the desk and crossed to the red-upholstered armchair that sat before the fire. 221B Baker Street was virtually identical to how it had looked in his heyday, the only concession to the passage of time being the computer and video console. These intrusions he actually welcomed; he'd always availed himself of the latest in scientific equipment and this was just more of the same, the tools of his trade. One change, however, was most definitely _not_ welcome: the tobacco laws of 22nd-century Britain. A three-pipe problem, as he'd called it, took on a significantly different aspect when there were no pipes to be smoked.

"I quite agree," Watson said. "Judging from the information Lord Engleston provided to you, Astra-Transit has been compromising on safety for years. Justice has certainly taken its course."

"In the case of the corporation, yes, but the initial cause of the accident remains unresolved. I hardly think that Astra-Transit was responsible for the disappearing _Alicia_ and the wrecking of their own shuttle."

"True enough, but do you have any idea as to who _is_ responsible?"

"I have a number of ideas, Watson, but I prefer not to speculate without evidence. Too often, the habit serves to chill a detective's imagination rather than inspire it, and is destructive to the logical faculties. It is a capital mistake to theorize in advance of one's facts."

The beep from his console indicating an incoming vidphone call interrupted him, but rather than being annoyed, Holmes smiled.

"That, no doubt, will be the arrival of some of those facts. Yes, Inspector?" he said to the screen.

New Scotland Yard Inspector Beth Lestrade was a direct descendant of the Lestrade Holmes had known at the turn of the twentieth century. She shared her ancestor's dogged tenacity, but combined it with both superior attention to logical method and an impulsive temper that often short-circuited her otherwise excellent intelligence.

"I have those Air Defense records you asked for, and I hope you appreciate the favor. We do have work of our own here at New Scotland Yard."

"Your dedication and sacrifice are duly noted. I hope it wasn't required to hit anyone."

Lestrade snorted.

"No, though I wanted to. You'd think I'd asked for the plans to our national defense grid from the way they carried on, even though you've been authorized to investigate the incident."

"I expected as much. The bureaucratic mind, I am sorry to say, has changed very little in two hundred years. That was why I requested your assistance. The sight of an official uniform may well have been the point that tipped the scales in your favor." To say nothing of her...relentless...style of interpersonal communication.

"Whatever it is, you owe me for this, Sherlock. I'm sending the data now."

Lestrade signed off and Holmes requested the computer display the information she'd sent. His eyes greedily examined the video and text reports that scrolled by in separate subscreens, showing the progress of traffic in and out of New London Spaceport at the time of the incident.

"Watson, come here a moment."

"Yes, Holmes?"

He pointed at the screen.

"These are the records of the military's aerospace defense net over the spaceport at the time of the _Alicia_'s appearance and disappearance. Do you see what I _don't_ see?"

Watson stared at the screen.

"I see the _Stanburton_ on its outgoing trip, its veer off-course, and the path of the crash, just as the control tower records indicated. Everything checks out."

"Quite so, but there appears to be a significant difference in the two records. Computer; display in parallel the current file and file LSCT-A, simultaneous time indexes."

The difference was obvious.

"The _Alicia_!" Watson exclaimed. "Where's the _Alicia_?"

"Precisely, Watson. According to the British military, there was no such craft at any time, either before, during, or after her very dramatic appearance."

"But, Holmes, that isn't possible. The tower records confirm that she was there, and they had not been tampered with--and then there were the other spacecraft as well, which also reported seeing the _Alicia_. You said so yourself."

"Not 'seeing,' Watson, but detecting. What the control tower and the spacecraft believed they saw was a carefully crafted illusion designed to exploit a unique hole in our space traffic system control. Think of it as the electronic equivalent of taping a cardboard silhouette to the inside of a drawn blind. From outside the window it will appear to be a shadow cast by a person within, but there is no one there."

Watson looked befuddled, an expression not too different from one his human counterpart had often sported.

"But Holmes, what was it they were seeing, if not a ship?"

"This." He backed up the Air Defense sensor log and zoomed in.

"But that's just debris jettisoned by the _Prescott_ on her departure, the release of her booster fuel cores."

"Is it? I very much wonder."

-X X X-

"I appreciate you bringing me in on this, Sherlock," Lestrade said as she navigated her police cruiser through the traffic-clogged skies of the city, weaving its way between a century's worth of exotic architecture. Holmes caught sight of Big Ben, the ancient landmark, and felt a pang of nostalgia to see it surrounded by towers of glass and steel that loomed over it like a gang of street roughs threatening an elderly gentleman.

_Useless sentimentality._ He thrust it aside forcefully. Bad enough he'd become more emotional in his new incarnation--some effect of the rejuvenation process on his brain-chemistry? Or merely a reaction to the modern, more demonstrative age he'd found himself in?--but he would not allow himself to become mawkish during a case.

"Nonsense, Lestrade; you were able to obtain the relevant data records for me. It was only logical to have you in at the final denouement."

Lestrade looked at him for a long moment.

"The Air Defense records, yes, but Tennyson could have gotten the citizen file you wanted."

Tennyson was the genius hacker who was one of Holmes's new band of Baker Street Irregulars. Lestrade was wont to dismiss them as kids half the time, and the rest as potential criminals whose work with Holmes was the only think keeping them out of the gangs, so it was generous on her part to admit the boy could access New Scotland Yard secure files.

"Quite so, but not with such ease. Nor does Tennyson possess legal arrest powers. I should think this would be quite a coup for you, Lestrade, capturing the perpetrator behind the _Stanburton_ tragedy."

"It would be if it were my case to investigate."

Holmes waved the objection aside.

"Not at all. I was retained by Lord Engleston for the specific purpose of solving this incident. It is no more than my duty as an English citizen to report evidence of wrongdoing to the proper authorities."

"Are you sure you weren't a lawyer instead of a detective?" Lestrade said, grinning. "I'll have to try that one out on Chief Inspector Grayson when he asks me what the zed I was doing."

Not surprisingly, Lord Engleston cleared time for a meeting with Holmes as soon as he was told that a solution had been found. The Bureau chief's eyes were eager in anticipation when he saw Holmes, then dimmed and turned sour at the sight of Lestrade's uniform.

"Holmes, what is the meaning of this?"

"This is Inspector Lestrade of New Scotland Yard, my lord. I brought her in because my investigation clearly shows that the apparent disappearance of the _Alicia_ and the resultant crash goes beyond mere accident and is clearly a criminal matter."

Lord Engleston stroked his beard, digesting the information.

"You were supposed to report to me, Holmes. The Astronautics Bureau's final report on the incident would be forwarded to the proper authorities once it was completed if further action was deemed necessary. This is a serious breach of discretion." He exhaled with a loud, sharp gust of breath. "Still, that's procedural and I'm interested in results. Can't expect a private agent to toe the Bureau's policy line of every little matter."

"Quite," Holmes agreed.

"I gather that by calling this a criminal matter the incident of the _Alicia_ was done deliberately? Some hacker's prank?"

Holmes shook his head.

"Deliberately, yes, but no prank. This was a complex and well-laid plan executed with expert knowledge and specific purpose. Nor was it a simple matter of computer terrorism, as your own initial investigation had already discovered. On the contrary, this involved intricate mechanical and electronic planning alike."

"But for what, Holmes? What 'specific purpose'? What could anyone have to gain by creating such an incident?"

Holmes smiled thinly.

"I'm surprised that you would need to ask that, Lord Engleston. After all, it was your scheme."


	4. Chapter 4

Lord Engleston scowled ferociously, his nostrils flaring like those of a snorting bull ready to charge--an apt simile given his thick, powerful build.

"Your humor is in extremely bad taste, Holmes."

"There is no humor on my part, merely bluff on yours, Lord Engleston. You are the man responsible for the disappearing _Alicia_ and therefore the indirect cause of the crash of the _Stanburton_."

"Damn it, Holmes, I'm your client!"

"The British Astronautics Bureau is my client; you are merely its representative. Besides which, it would not be the first time that a guilty person has sought my services."

"Sherlock, if you're going to be making charges like that, you'd better be sure of your facts," Lestrade warned.

"Ah, but I am."

"Prove it!" Lord Engleston bellowed, his face turning red with choler.

"Very well, I shall. I began the investigation with one obvious fact: there never was an _Alicia_on the night in question."

"But there is an _Alicia_, Holmes," Watson protested. "We saw it."

"We saw the genuine cutter, Watson, but the control tower and fellow spacecraft did not. Was it possible for a spacecraft to simply vanish? Clearly not. Could it have been taken aboard another craft in mid-flight? Unlikely, given the difficulty of such a maneuver during takeoff or reentry, and made impossible by the fact that none of the other craft, excepting the _Stanburton_, came near enough to the _Alicia_'s apparent location to permit such a maneuver. Could it have been destroyed? Again, impossible; an act of violence on that scale would have been detected. At the very least the military or intelligence apparatus would have been all over the investigation.

"I was thus forced to conclude that the _Alicia_had never been physically present, and thus the point of my investigation became to solve not the _disappearance_ but rather the mystery of how it had _appeared_in the first place. The most obvious solution--that the _Alicia_was a data artifact created by hacking the spaceport computer system--was ruled out not only by the Bureau's electronic investigation, but also by the fact that at least three other spacecraft also reported the _Alicia_'s existence."

"But that would mean that there was something there after all," Watson observed.

"Ah, but _what_was there? That is the question."

Holmes tapped his fingertips together.

"I was struck by a curious fact in reviewing the Bureau reports. All the records of the _Alicia_'s appearance and disappearance depended entirely on the existence of transponder data. That is, we did not actually have sensor reports of the cutter, but rather logs of a transponder reporting its position and identifying itself as the _Alicia_ to the control tower and other ships. Our talk with Mr. Martinez confirmed my suspicions. The flight-control transponder system is efficient in regulating aerospace traffic, but is wholly dependent upon the transponders themselves providing accurate data. Once I recognized that, the conclusion was elementary."

"A false transponder!" Lestrade exclaimed.

"Impossible!" Lord Engleston snapped. "Creation of a transponder demands approval from the international oversight authorities."

Holmes smiled thinly.

"Precisely."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning that anyone wishing to create a false transponder signal which would fool onlookers--particularly the control tower--had to be certain that the signal would match the original as it was duly recorded in the international database. A forged digital signature, just as a hand-written one, must match the existing samples. The concept is, as I said, quite elementary. Just as obviously, the forger must have access to the original in order to create the copy. The original exists in only two places: the actual _Alicia_'s transponder and the database."

"But even if an artificial transponder was created duplicating the _Alicia_'s , its broadcast location would have to duplicate the course noted by the witnesses," Watson observed. "It would do no good to broadcast the signal from here, for example. The tower would notice that, unless its computers were tampered with."

"Which we already know that they were not. Precisely, Watson."

"Then what _happened_?" Lestrade asked, frustrated as always with the wait. No doubt, Holmes concluded, the Inspector's impatience was preventing her from following the chain of thought through to the next link.

"Simplicity itself, Lestrade. The imitation transponder was launched, following the path which was duly recorded for it. The tower operators, who run the spaceport traffic system based on transponder logs, merely assumed that the appropriate spacecraft was attached to it and acted accordingly, when in fact all that was there was the transponder and a broadcasting apparatus. I doubt that such a thing would occupy more than a space the size of a large suitcase?"

"Launched, you say?" Lord Engleston demanded. "Launched from where?"

"There is only one place it could have been launched from."

"The _Prescott_!" Watson exclaimed. "That's what you were pointing out before, Holmes. It was released simultaneously with the jettisoning of the booster cores, in order to conceal its existence in case something went wrong!"

"Very good, Watson; you have it exactly. The signaling device with fake transponder was launched, doubtlessly by pre-programmed control, and simply fell towards Earth, transmitting its artificial signal until it burned up on reentry, destroying the evidence. This was the cause of the _Alicia_'s supposed disappearance."

"But in that case, Holmes, why suspect Lord Engleston? The _Prescott_is a Gold Lion spaceship, and the _Alicia_is the private vessel of Gold Lion's CEO."

Holmes nodded.

"Quite so. Your argument, I may add, is even stronger than you think, when I point out that the result of the incident has been a critical blow to one of Gold Lion's major competitors--as, I suspect, it was intended to, although not in such a catastrophic fashion. Nor is it a coincidence that both the _Alicia_'s original transponder and the _Prescott_ were within the control of one man."

"Harker!"

Holmes shook his head slowly.

"No, Watson. Can you see that gentleman dressed in a workman's coveralls, a case of tools at his side? How could it escape comment if a financier were to install a module on the exterior of the _Prescott_? No, I spoke of Raul Martinez, the corporation's chief spacecraft engineer. He possesses both the expertise and access to carry out the scheme. It was undeniably his hands that did the task."

"So you're backing down from that ridiculous accusation?" Lord Engleston barked.

"Not in the least. Martinez's hands, yes, but his was not the guiding will behind the scheme."

The bureau chief slammed his fist down on his desk.

"I swear, Holmes, that if I don't have an apology from you before you leave this room I'll have you in the dock for slander!"

Holmes sighed.

"Your bluster is all too commonplace; I've heard it before from better men than you. Surely, for example, you will not deny that Mr. Martinez was formerly an engineer for the Astronautics Bureau before he moved to the corporate sector? Ironically enough, one of the expert investigators you used to examine the cause of mishaps in space travel?"

"How did you--?"

"One of the more depressing realities of our present age is the amount of data our government collects about the life histories of private citizens. The good Inspector consulted Mr. Martinez's citizen file to confirm my suspicions, but the idea had already been suggested to me by his own words. His glib explanation of the arrangements between independent powers for the maintenance of the transponder database had already told me that I was dealing with a man whose experiences extended well beyond the technical confines of his job."

"Well, so what if it is true?" Lord Engleston snapped. "It's nothing more than a coincidence. You can't tie him to me! Besides, so far all I've heard is a lot of theory. Where's your evidence?"

"I have no doubt that New Scotland Yard will be able to establish that evidence to link the two of you. Communications are not so readily concealed as they were in my day. But you are correct in one regard, Lord Engleston. At this very moment, I have more evidence against you than I do against Mr. Martinez."

"Against _me_? What are you saying?"

"Come, come, Lord Engleston," Holmes pressed. "When you came to me, it was allegedly because the investigation into the apparent _Alicia_had reached a dead end, despite your best efforts, is that not so?"

"Of course it is. Do you think I _want_ phantom spacecraft flying about disrupting traffic?"

"In this case, I am certain that you did. Or do you have some other explanation for why you did not take the most basic, the most obvious step that you could, and consult with Air Defense to see if they had noticed the _Alicia_at any point on the night in question? Not even a rank amateur would have missed that elementary step. You, however, couldn't risk one of your sharp-eyed subordinates stumbling on the truth, and so you deliberately avoided taking that step."

Lord Engleston had leapt from his seat to meet Holmes face-to-face during the beginning of the detective's accusation, but the color drained from him as Holmes's words struck again and again like a lash. Shaking, he fell back into his chair.

"Nineteen innocent people, Lord Engleston," Holmes said, more gently. "Isn't that enough? You've achieved your aim, and I cannot think this was the cost you intended."

"His aim? What aim?" Lestrade exploded. "What could possibly be the point of creating a panic?"

It was not Holmes who answered, but the minister.

"Astra-Transit," he said with a sigh. "We knew they were cutting corners on safety, but we didn't have any evidence to initiate an investigation, so I decided to provoke a situation to give the Bureau an excuse."

"By killing nineteen people?" Lestrade was incredulous.

"It wasn't supposed to happen that way!" he almost screamed. "I never thought...I never believed that Astra-Transit's attention to basic maintenance could be so utterly abysmal! I'd hoped to cause an incident, but that such a complete disaster could take place from a simple wave-off..."

Lord Engleston sagged back in his chair and buried his face in his hands.

-X X X-

The astonishing speed by which information spread in the cybernetic age was demonstrated again for Sherlock Holmes by the fact that Lord Engleston's arrest was already being trumpeted by the news services by the time he'd returned to 221B. He'd silenced the electronic voices almost at once, preferring the melancholy refrain of his violin to the unceasing chatter of society. Watson, knowing his friend's moods almost as well as had the original, did not intrude for over an hour, merely remaining silent. Only when Holmes at last put the violin down did he endeavor to speak.

"Holmes, I hope I'm not disturbing you..."

"What is it, Watson?"

"It's only that...I don't understand how you knew Lord Engleston's motive for what he did."

"Oh, that?" Holmes shrugged. "Purely elementary. He as good as told me during our initial meeting."

"I see. And that's another thing, Holmes. If he was the guilty party, why did he hire you?"

"Insurance, perhaps--an attempt to make it clear to the world that the Astronautics Bureau was doing all within its power to solve the mystery of the phantom spacecraft. No doubt the idea of employing a man for whom the automobile was a new invention to solve a mystery involving space travel appealed to him. And then again..."

"Yes, Holmes?" Watson prompted after a few moments' silence.

"The human soul is a curious and immeasurable thing, Watson. One might speculate that Lord Engleston, having provoked the very tragedy that his scheme was designed to prevent, was torn between the lure of self-preservation and the need to confess his guilt, and so decided to leave his fate in the hands of a third party."

He picked up his violin again and nestled it into place between chin and shoulder.

"That, however, would be pure guesswork, and as you know, Watson, I never guess."

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_NOTE: For the curious, the original Conan Doyle fragment from which this story's idea was drawn comes from "The Problem of Thor Bridge," in which it states: "No less remarkable is that of the cutter _Alicia_, which sailed one spring morning into a small patch of mist from where she never again emerged, nor was anything further ever heard of herself and her crew." This story is actually referenced as an "unfinished" tale which, while Holmes was called to consult, failed to arrive at a solution. Apparently, he did better when he got a second chance at the problem two hundred years later!_


End file.
